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[Page 15]
on the diving gauge. This meant that the after part of the boat and the top of the bridge were showing above water. This was indeed alarming as we were surrounded by forts. We could hear the shells striking the water and buroting outside. At this stage the Captain Stoker told us to remain cool and all would go well. He then looked through the periscope and saw that we were being fired on from all sides (it was only a miracle that we were not hit). After the Captain had a quick look around, he gave the order to go full speed ahead. We were soon delighted to see by the depth gauge that we were moving off into deep water and we were soon down to 80 feet, as if nothing had happened. (During all this the Captain remained extremely cool, for all depended on him at this stage. It is due to his coolness that I am now writing this account. Nobody knows what a terrible strain it is on the nerves to undergo anything like this, especially the Captain, as all depends on him.
When we showed our periscope again we were off Point Nagara the Captain looking astern saw that we were being followed and ahead of us were two tugs coming which evidently had a sweep out to try and catch us, but we immediately went down to 90 feet and altered course to starboard to keep well clear of the tugs. We kept on this course and ran into a big bay on the Asiatic side just above Point Nagara, the Captain looking through the periscope, saw that we had misled our enemies, not having sufficient electricity left in our batteries to take us into the sea of Marmora the only thing we could do was to lay on the bottom and wait till nightfall when we could come onto the surface and charge our batteries. After the Captain was certain that we had not been seen, we went into the bottom at 8.30 a.m (25.4.15?) and lay there at a depth of 95 feet. After this we fell in for reading of prayers, it being Sunday. When ships do not carry a Chaplain the Captain does the duty. After this a watchkeeper was told off to watch the diving gauge and report any noises on the outside of the boat (for when a submarine is submerged every sound can be heard from the outside, a ship can be heard passing over-head the screw and the throbbing of the engines. The remainder of us were told we could sleep as we were all dead tired, having been up nearly all the previous night. At 2 p.m. the hands were called and put to diving stations and preparations were made to rise to the surface to see what was going on.
When we moved our screws(we must have been lying on the edge of a bank) the boat sank down to a great depth. This was very dangerous as the thin skin [of] a submarine is only built to stand a certain pressure of water, the diving gauges are only made to register to 100 feet and on this occasion our gauge was hard over and the needle of the gauge bending so we did not know what depth we went down to but it was a very close thing. However we got sufficient air pressure into our main ballast banks to
[Note at side of page "Perhaps this is what happened to AE2 but think he means AE1.]